Bound
by antepathy
Summary: IDW Perceptor/Drift, slash, shibari


SHIBARI  
NC-17  
IDW  
Perceptor/Drift  
sticky, shibari,

The slide of rope over metal was, Perceptor thought, almost hypnotic. He bent lower, looping it around Drift's right upper arm, then pulled through into a half-hitch, then over across the backspan to the other arm. Five loops already, around the arms, pulling them tight, over the rib struts, then across the naked back, Drift's Great Sword propped against the far wall—something far too valued to be, Perceptor imagined, subjected to this. As though the Drift that liked being bound was separate from the warrior.

Six. Drift liked six loops.

Perceptor couldn't imagine what it had taken for Drift to approach him, vorns ago, with this strange desire. A courage Perceptor knew he did not have. But he had agreed, because it was Drift, and he would do nearly anything to repay Drift—he owed Drift his life, and compared to that, agreeing to bind him with rope seemed…nothing. And also, because it was Drift. Beautiful, skilled, quiet, deep. And he trusted his secret to Perceptor.

So Perceptor had learned, and found that he derived some strange pleasure in it himself—the raw slide of the rope, the neat rows of half-hitches, the even parallel lines of the bindings, and the infinite creativity in immobilization.

And…the control. There was something indescribable about Drift, still, quiet before him, letting Perceptor bind him, head bowed, patient. There was something about the power to keep a force as large and wild as Drift, quiet, tied, controlled. Until Perceptor saw fit to set him free.

There. Six loops, pulled taut.

In the beginning, he'd fretted he was hurting Drift, putting too much pressure on the bindings, had asked, and queried, even while realizing that his consideration was unwanted. Now, he knew Drift well enough to read his body, to see the electric tremor in the back plates as he wound the last half hitch.

He stepped back to unspool some more, figuring what to bind next. The ankles had been cross-bound, keeping Drift sitting on the floor. And now the upper arms. What next?

Wrists.

Perceptor dropped back to his knees, looping the rope around Drift's right wrist, with a swift, practiced ease. He remembered how he had fumbled, and how awkward it felt. And then how he had practiced, in private, until he could do a small cuff of half-hitched loops easily. Six, again, before he looped back up to the center of Drift's spine, worming one finger through the top of the half-hitches there until he could feed the rope through, like a pulley, tugging Drift's wrist up. Then the other wrist, bound the same way. Through it all, Drift sat, quiet, his ventilations deep and steady, as if he were somehow meditating, sinking into the experience.

Perceptor cut the rope, studying Drift. He felt his sensor net aswim with desire, and he tugged Drift's shoulder back against him, suddenly, feeling the head loll back, Drift sunk in some kind of reverie. He said nothing. Words were unwelcome here, the only communication between them through touch and will.

Perceptor reached over, snapping open Drift's interface hatch. A wry smile: as he expected, Drift was aroused, his spike stabbing into the air the instant it was released. Drift made a soft moan in his throat at the exposure, at the cool strike of air against it.

Yes. Forward bind this time. Perceptor had considered binding Drift back, stretched out, arched up and over, but not this time.

He pushed the shoulders down, hand splaying in the vulnerable, sensitive attachment points where the Great Sword normally hung. Drift moved obediently, bowing forward. Perceptor slipped the rope around the attachment points in a quick figure-8, anchoring what he was about to do.

He moved forward, coming to kneel in front of Drift, the white helm's spires brushing his chassis, stooping to catch the rope under one of the loops of the ankle-binding, constraining Drift like this, bent forward. He brought the rope back up, over the back of Drift's neck, and paused to check the angle. Not…quite.

Perceptor reached under Drift's chassis, blind, running his hand over the bare armor down the chest plating, the finer overlapping panels of his abdominal armor, and then to the spike. Drift's optics blinked, his body twitching, as Perceptor felt the length, letting his thumb travel the spike's shape to the tip. That was his gauge. He tugged on the rope, hauling Drift lower, closer to his ankles, until, yes, there—the spike's sensitive upper node pressed against Drift's black belly. Perceptor cinched the rope there, withdrawing his hand and going about fixing the binding, doing a quick series of figure-8 interlacings on the length between Drift's helm and his ankles, ending with one final quick-release loop, tantalizing Drift with its closeness. Just out of his reach.

There. Yes. He could see the rightness of it: the symmetry of the bindings, the clean lines of the red rope over Drift's body, the taut excitement in Drift's frame, wanting and needing this. He'd always thought Drift was beautiful, but never moreso than now, when he didn't think or worry about anyone, what anyone thought of him. When he was just…inward, present here, not lost in the past, not regretting the future, just here, now. Ironic that such confinement meant release for him, and it made no clear sense to Perceptor, but he'd seen the shivering release when he'd unbound Drift, had noticed how afterwards, for days, Drift was quieter, calmer, more at ease, as though he exorcised some demons in these moments.

Perceptor left him to it, crossing the room out of Drift's line of sight, leaving him to himself while Perceptor opened a tactical manual to study. Each was acutely, agonizingly aware of the other mech: Perceptor could feel Drift's presence like a hard throb on his sensor net. And he knew Drift needed to sense him, that he was still here, that Drift wasn't entirely abandoned. And he trusted, always, that Perceptor would let him go.

[***]

Perceptor shut off the datapad, turning to check on Drift. Drift had hooked the first two fingers of his hands together, a childlike self-comforting gesture that made Perceptor ache, but otherwise he was bound exactly as Perceptor had left him. Of course: Perceptor had studied for this as well.

The rib struts shivered. Drift needed some release. Perceptor knelt beside him, reaching to the binding, tugging on the quick release that sprung the whole series of lines binding Drift's head down. Drift sat up, slowly, mouth working, optics dim and distant, lost in himself. Perceptor resisted the urge to kiss the mouth. That was not what Drift needed. He did not need connection right now, affection; he needed raw, brutal, physical release.

Perceptor caught at the spike, achingly erect from having its top clusters jammed into contact with Drift's armor for the last cycle. His hands moved with a smooth, almost dispassionate efficiency, stroking up and down the spike, tugging, twisting, demanding it release. He felt Drift's thighs tighten, anticipating, building to climax. His own spike shuddered in its housing, with its own wants, but he shoved those aside, roughly. This was not about him.

Drift cried out, the overload wracking his system, his spike jumping in Perceptor's hand as the transfluid spurted, silver and hot, across his chassis. His optics rolled, head lolling to one side. Perceptor nodded. Yes. That was right. He tucked the spike back in its housing swiftly, Drift shuddering at the contact, and then moved forward, rebinding Drift's head bowed down, his transfluid streaking and dripping off his chassis. Perceptor tried to hide the desperate shaking of his own hands. It took everything he had not to thrust Drift forward, hike his hips up, and take him, exposed, vulnerable, driving his own spike into Drift's valve, pushing urgently for his own release. Drift was powerless to stop him.

Which was…precisely why he didn't. He finished the binding, hurriedly, Drift once again bent over his bound ankles, still lost, rapt in his own world. Perceptor pushed up, urgently, moving out of Drift's line of sight, clawing at his own interface hatch, grabbing his own spike as soon as he was near enough to grab a wall and began pumping urgently at it, desire raging through his systems.

He was not quiet: he'd never been quiet before Drift met him, and though he managed to quell it in public, he'd never been able to maintain such silence when confronted with desire. He whimpered, moaned, his hand clawing at the wall, the sharp sounds of his hand jerking the lubricant slicked spike painfully audible. Drift could hear him, easily, and in a way, he wanted Drift to hear, to know how much he aroused Perceptor, how much control Perceptor himself had to use, that this was not just some…odd practice he indulged Drift in.

He jerked, with an inarticulate cry, the overload hitting sudden and fast, before subsiding to a shiver. When he got control of himself, he looked: Drift, still breathing deep and slow. Not yet. Drift needed more time.

[***]

Drift was ready, his bound hands palm-to-palm, one of the half a hundred signs Perceptor had learned to read in this new language, and his ventilation was sharper, shorter, the lack of control becoming real and terrifying. Drift had explained, once, trying to quell Perceptor's concerns, that the experience ebbed and flowed, from peaceful to terrifying, like an oscillating wave of trust. And that he wanted to be released on the nadir, where, he'd murmured, quietly, embarrassed to admit it, he could feel the freedom more acutely as salvation, redemption.

Perceptor stepped up and leaned over, drawing one of Drift's short swords from its scabbard and slashing through the leads from Drift's wrists to the back binding. He didn't often use swords, but he had this much skill and the symbolism of using Drift's own weapons to free him felt…right.

The cut rope went slack, Drift moving swiftly to action, snatching his wrists apart, working the arm bindings loose before jerking at the quick release that bound him bent over.

He sat up, panting, as though coming up for air, his hands still tearing at the slack loops of red. And Perceptor was there, not helping, not hindering but there and ready for when Drift reached over, hooking his arms around Perceptor's shoulders, pulling him down, pulling them both down to lie along the floor, pressing his stress-heated systems against Perceptor's longer frame, seeking a mute comfort from the one who had bound him.


End file.
